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John Lennon’s ‘Love Me Do’ Guitar Found, and Is Up for Sale

John Lennon’s original 1962 J-160E Gibson Acoustic guitar. The guitar had been lost for over 50 years.Credit Julien’s Auctions

John Lennon’s 1962 Gibson guitar is a blip in the history of the Beatles. He played it for early hits like “Love Me Do,” but it disappeared in 1963 and was quickly replaced. End of story.

That is until about 50 years later, when an amateur guitarist named John McCaw was told his J-160E Gibson looked similar to Lennon’s. It has since been authenticated and will be up for auction later this year. What Mr. McCaw bought for a couple of hundred dollars in the 1970s is now estimated to fetch between $600,000 and $800,000, according to Julien’s Auctions, which will sell the guitar in November.

“It easily could have been lost,” said Darren Julien, president and chief executive of the auction house, which is in Los Angeles.

The guitar — which Lennon played while writing, for example, “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” — went missing in Britain but somehow made its way to San Diego. Mr. Julien said there haven’t been any explanations for that gap in the guitar’s history. What he does know is that the store that sold it to Mr. McCaw had no idea what the instrument was worth.

Mr. McCaw held on to the guitar for decades, without modifying or refinishing it. Last year, one of his friends recognized it in a book by Andy Babiuk, a Beatles expert who has authenticated the band’s memorabilia in the past.

In a news release, Mr. Babiuk said he didn’t make much of the guitar at first. He gets calls and emails from people claiming to have found Beatles instruments, “and 99 percent of the time it’s nothing,” he said.

It was the guitar’s matching serial number and appearance that caught Mr. Babiuk’s attention. He then analyzed the wood grain to eventually match the guitar with the one Lennon lost in the ’60s.

Mr. Julien said, “There’s no mistaking it’s the guitar.”

The guitar will be shown at two exhibitions this summer, first at the L.B.J. Presidential Library in Austin, Tex. (from Saturday to June 29), then at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles (July 2 to Sept. 7). It will then be on public display at Julien’s Auctions from Nov. 2-6 before the auction on Nov. 6 and 7.

A version of this article appears in print on 06/08/2015, on page C3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Lennon’s Guitar On ‘Love Me Do’ for Sale.